I am back home in my favorite thinking position, supine on the couch, when I watch my Miss Temple enter our rooms at the Circle Ritz, red eyed and shaky.
She walks out of her spunky high-rise clogs as soon as the door is locked behind her, letting her bare feet luxuriate in the faux longhaired goat rug under her coffee table before she collapses onto the sofa, a.k.a. (all too often, in my opinion) the love seat.
I, of course, am entrenched there in one of my Playgirl poses, but she ignores my manly chest hair. I see in an instant that what she needs is a cocktail table, but I am no barkeep.
She digs her trusty cell phone from the bottom of her signature tote bag and pushes a single button.
I can guess who she’s dialing: my rival for her affections, the first and only Max Kinsella, the once and future Mystifying Max. The man who would be king, and still her live-in, except that I am here now, bud.
I figure I better earn my pride of place and bestir myself to cozy up to her hip, running my tongue down her wrist, always a ploy that drives the ladies crazy.
She waves me away, redialing.
“Answer, Max! Answer” she beseeches the cell phone, poor little thing. Oh, man! This is so lame. “Answer. I need you!”
No. She needs me. Usually she knows this. How can I get through to her? We communicate without words, but right now she is too distressed to sense our usual rapport.
She punches another button. And waits.
“Matt? Oh, thank God!”
Well, I thank Bastet myself, but that is a somewhat old-fashioned practice, I admit. Still, it is better than thanking Elvis, which I have been known to do on occasion. Any deity in a storm.
I recall my own traumatic reunions in recent hours and resort to the self-soothing regimen that proved so effective for catkind. I stretch out along my Miss Temple’s hip, purring up a furry hurricane. She strokes me absently. Absently!
“Matt, I just had to tell Danny Dove that Simon Foster, his significant other . . . oh, God . . . is dead.”
Is my Miss Temple saying that God Is Dead? That is so over.
Well, there is no one faster to intervene in a crisis than a priest, even if he is an ex (the most dangerous kind, in my opinion).
“No, I’m all right,” she says, clearly not.
Why do people lie about their states of affairs? When I am down in the dumps or fit to be tied, everyone around me knows it, and can take appropriate measures. But no, people have to waylay each other with polite lies. No wonder homicide only happens to Homo sapiens. Hey, that is kind of catchy! Not to mention alliterative. Too bad I am not a tunesmith.
Well, Mr. Matt will be here in a Las Vegas minute, which is how long it takes to lose fifteen hundred dollars at the craps table.
I roll away, miffed. No one notices. Still, despite the humiliation, I should hang around to overhear what’s going on. So low has the role of the private dick sunk in the present day. Sam Spade would never have put up with this.
Miss Temple cannot even wait for him to arrive, but starts for the door on her little cat feet, barefoot. On her naked pads! Without defensive shivs!
If my petite miss were a vegetable, she’d be a radish: small and colorful, with bite. Right now, her bite has become all gum and no fang. I hate to see her acting like an overcooked broccoli, which is pretty limp to begin with.
Mr. Matt Devine’s knuckles barely brush hardwood before she has the door wide open.
I sneak behind the sofa, so as not to inhibit my subjects, and crouch into position with my ears cranked forward, on high fidelity.